I'm not sure there are words to cover the lacuna that has been the last year of life in London. We made it through lockdown 2.0 (a joke) and lockdown 3.0 (a really bad dream). I went to work for a spate of time between September and December before being contact traced by a member of staff. We abandoned socialising, planning and even being hopeful about when we might do these things. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went without any sense of occasion. I made no attempt to book flights home for the holidays, only the second time I've not been home since I moved abroad.
In a story that's far too close to home to bear repeating, I acquired a very mild case of Covid in early January. So mild, I didn't get tested. But then Paul lost his sense of taste and smell and we became casa Covid for a window of time. But we got lucky; neither of us had it too badly.
And then a bigger glimmer of hope in the form of science and a vaccine emerged. Paul was called in early Feb for his. Mine arrived much later, towards the end of March. We watched government ministers lie, profit and philander their way through the crisis unscathed.
In a somewhat vain attempt to hope that normality might return in the summer, we booked flights back to the US to attend my little sister's wedding at the beginning of July. We waited and watched to see what travel restrictions and vaccination campaigns would mean for Paul being allowed in the country. US Travel restrictions, still as of today, mandate that anyone non-citizen or greencard holding who has spent the last 14-days in one of the following countries is barred entry: the UK; the EU (clearly, a homogenous 'place' according to the US); China; Iran; South Africa; Brazil. No matter that the US has the most number of Covid cases in the world despite its access to vaccines. No matter political dramas in a number of those countries. No matter.
And so we begged, pleaded and applied for special status for Paul to travel. But we're not married so our relationship doesn't count. Apparently.
And so, I cancelled Paul's flight, grappled with changes when my flight got cancelled, Covid tested two days before departure, smiled through graduation and prom and, against all odds, boarded a (first class!) flight bound for US soil early morning on the 26th of June. 
I'm not going to lie, upon wheels down in Atlanta, I burst into tears. When I eventually got to Detroit the next morning, I wept.
And here we are, in the age of Covid travel.
